Between You and Me. Susan Wiggs

but encouraged to experience life beyond the confines of the community. There was even a name for it—rumspringa. Running around. Most youngsters came running back to embrace baptism and Plain life. Folks thought Caleb would spend his rumspringa the way most kids did—riding around in cars, smoking tobacco and weed, listening to loud music, going to shopping malls and movies.

      Caleb had known he would be one of the small percentage of Amish kids who left for good. He knew he’d never join the church, never marry an Amish girl, never raise a family the way his brother was doing. He was forever yearning, one foot out the door, poised for flight. He wanted to see the ocean one day. Wanted to fly in a plane. To learn the calculus and study science and literature and things of that nature. He wanted to experience the world in all its messy, confusing glory.

      Most of all, he wanted distance from his father.

      Instead of partying, Caleb spent his time at the library. He learned to use books and computers as sophisticated information systems to find out all he could about anything imaginable.

      That was how he’d eventually found his mother. A grueling bus ride had taken him to central Florida, where the air was so hot and muggy he could scarcely breathe. The town was nowhere near the ocean or the Gulf of Mexico, but hunched at the side of a highway that bisected the long, narrow state. His search ended at a street lined with modest houses surrounded by scrubby grass and trees decked with little orange bittersweet fruit called calamondin. He still remembered the expression on her face when she had opened the front door. Complete and utter shock had drained her cheeks of color, then blossomed into wonder.

       “John?”

      “Caleb,” he said. For the love of God, she couldn’t tell her sons apart.

      “Who is it, Mom?” called a voice. A young girl came to the door. She stopped and stared at Caleb. Although he wore English clothes, she stared as if he were an alien from outer space.

      Mem leaned her back against the doorframe and tipped back her head, looking up at the sky and then closing her eyes.

      He’d scarcely remembered her face. There were no photographs of her. He used to try drawing the image he had of her in his mind, but the picture never turned out. Now he saw Hannah in the curve of her cheek and in the wavy blond hair. He saw Jonah in the bright blue eyes and the busy hands.

      She mouthed some words, but no sound came out. Her legs seemed to give out and she slid down to the mat, hugging her knees up to her chest. A dry sob heaved from a place deep inside her, and then the floodgates opened.

      He remembered this from his childhood. Mem used to cry a lot. The girl—Caleb later learned her name was Nancy—backed away, her eyes round with fright. “Mom,” she said. “Mommy, what’s the matter?”

      “You’d best pull yourself together, Mem,” Caleb said in Deitsch.

      Maybe the sound of the old dialect caught her attention. She took in a deep breath and picked herself back up. Caleb pushed open the door. “Let’s go inside.”

      He entered the strange house. It had a vinyl floor and shabby furniture, and it smelled of something damp, like mildew. The girl called Nancy sat on a barstool in the corner, and Mem took a seat at the end of the sofa. Caleb stood in the doorway, waiting. He crossed his arms over his chest. “We woke up one morning and you were gone,” he said.

      A long silence stretched out. Cool air blew from a vent in the ceiling, a magic wind that turned the hot day cold.

      “Nancy, honey, you run along and play outside,” Mem said. “I need to speak with Caleb for a bit.”

      The girl’s chin tilted up slightly. “I want to stay.”

      Mem regarded her steadily. “Run along,” she repeated. “I’ll speak with you later.”

      Nancy hesitated for a beat. Then she climbed off the stool and left. The snap of a screen door punctuated her exit.

      Finally, Mem began to talk, and she seemed to talk for hours. “I couldn’t stay. I was drowning—or choking. That’s how it felt, day and night. I couldn’t breathe, living in fear of what Asa would do to me next. I was so young and naive, I didn’t even know what to call the things he did to me.”

      Caleb hadn’t known what to say to that. He hadn’t been quite certain of what she meant, although knowing his father’s temper, he had an idea.

      “I ran away in the night with nothing,” Mem continued. “Asa had hurt me bad. I thought I might die, but I didn’t. I survived and went off on my own for the first time in my life, and it was awful. But not as awful as staying. At first, I lost the will to live. Wandered out onto a busy highway without a thought for what might happen to me. I was lost. So very lost.” She turned her face to the window and stared outside. “I made a lot of stupid mistakes, but I made my way, bit by bit. Found work here in Florida and started over.”

      “It never occurred to you to take care of your own kids?” Caleb asked. “Did you think it was all right to leave us with the same man you ran away from because you were so scared of him?”

      She studied him with pale, tear-filled eyes. “There was no way Asa would have let me take you, and staying was impossible. I didn’t have a penny to my name. I knew nothing but Plain ways, and I’d never set foot outside the community. I could only hope you and John would be all right.” She stared at him, her eyes swimming with pain. “Did he … did your father …?”

      “You mean, did he beat me? Yah, sure, until John got big enough to stand up to him.”

      Their father didn’t seem to have the first idea about how to raise two boys. He’d always been strict and stern, with a fearsome temper, but Caleb had no memory of the terrible things Mem had suffered. However, he had witnessed his father’s fierce outbursts. John bore the brunt of the beatings. Yes, they were beatings, not spankings—with a belt, a shovel, a hacksaw, or any other weapon their father might grab. Caleb used to cower, shivering, under the cellar stairs when his father laid into John. At night, he’d hear his brother sniffing, trying not to make a sound as he wept, because if their father caught wind of crying, the beatings would start again.

      One Sunday, Caleb overheard John asking the bishop for help. The bishop said a man was obligated to discipline his family to achieve the peaceable fruit of righteousness.

      Later that same day, Caleb raided the apple bin and ate as many apples as his belly could hold. When his father discovered him, Caleb explained that he was tasting the fruit of righteousness. Asa flew into a rage and dragged Caleb out to the yard for a beating. That was when John stepped in, at fifteen already a full hand taller than their father. He planted himself like a wall between Caleb and Asa.

      “You’re not to lay a hand on my brother,” John said. “Not today. Not ever. If you’re going to hit anyone today, it’s going to be me.”

      Now Caleb’s mother deflated, curled into herself. “John, he was always the protective one. Knew how to stand up to his father. And look at you. How handsome you are. I knew John would look after you, and you would be all right.”

      “If that’s what you want to think.”

      “You look wonderful,” she said, her gaze devouring him. “It’s a miracle, seeing you again, Caleb. I never thought it would happen, but I dreamed of this day. Why, see how tall and handsome you are, just like John. So confident and smart. How is John doing now?”

      “John tried to take his own life,” he told his mother.

      She went completely still. “Oh, dear heaven,” she said. “No. No.”

      “He jumped off the bridge over Stony Gorge—”

      “No,” she said again, a horrified whisper.

      “He was seventeen years old. And he didn’t die. He wasn’t even hurt too bad. According to folks who saw it happen, he got up and brushed himself off and walked all the way back to Middle Grove. Dr. Shrock set his broken arm. The only thing